What’s On: London

Our top three picks for this penultimate 2011 edition of What’s On: London are as follows: KK Outlet have released a heap of “season’s greetings” on us like a fat man falling down a chimney with their festive jumper-loving O Come All Ye Hackers, the Serpentine presents Brazilian artist Lygia Pape and the New Bond Street Richard Green gallery has an LS Lowry exhibition.

Oh Come All Ye Hackers KK Outlet

Nothing is more festive than novelty knitwear – that’s a universal truth. Less well-known is that Bill Cosby owns the rights to at least 90% of the knit patterns in the world and in honour of that (lie – but could be true), Andrew Salomone and his Brother KH930 have hacked this Yuletide institution to excellent effect. With designed contributions from the likes of Siggi Eggertsson, Nous Vous, Geneveive Gaukler and a woollen interpretation of that most Xmas-y of events – the Slayer Christmas Lights Lightorama 2009 – Oh Come All Ye Hackers makes Santa look like the Easter Bunny. Showing until December 22.www.kkoutlet.com/o-come-all-ye-hackers

Lygia Pape: Magnetized Space Serpentine

Neo-Concretism – widely regarded as the movement that started contemporary art in Brazil – was in part founded by Lygia Pape whose practical and aesthetic determination to include art in everyday life was at the very heart of the movement. Magnetized Space denotes the charged political, social and ethical motivations behind her pieces which include drawings, wall works and sculptures, performances, poems and film. Pape, who died in 2004, is seen in retrospect through her decades of art, bringing together “daring experimentation and formal rigour.” Showing until February 19.www.serpentinegallery.org/lygia-pape

LS Lowry Richard Green

Scathingly described as a “Sunday painter” LS Lowry is one of the most contested of household artists – something that understandably annoyed him. He studied under a French Impressionist (thanks Wikipedia) and so his re-imagining of the vapid industrial landscape in a perspective-challenged outlook occupied by stick-people has some roots in a more ephemeral, subjective style of painting. Authentically primitive or naively so, this latest Lowry exhibition will undoubtedly go some way in compounding public opinion by its reappearance on the London scene alone, highlighting his extraordinarily large output. That and some rather interesting rumours about a Tate retrospective on the horizon… Showing until December 17.www.richard-green.com/lowry

“Everything is autobiographical” Lucian Freud said, “everything is a portrait, even if it’s only a chair.” Freud himself was instrumental in bringing together the pieces in the show at London’s National Portrait Gallery, working closely with the curators in selecting work from his entire career – a process that would go on to include his final ever portrait, unfinished at the time of his death in July 2011. Such is the scope of this exhibition that it will genuinely crumble any expectations you have of his work, replacing it instead will be a psychologically raw and infinitely more intimate respect for the power of portraiture.Freud’s work was/will always be dependent on his relationships with the sitter. Near the beginning of the show are a number of the works depicting his first wife Kitty Garman, painted in the late forties, early fifties, and are described as almost psychological in the detail.

Informing the Hayward Gallery of his expectations for his new show, David Shrigley said: “The responses I would like are laughter, intrigued confusion and disquiet” – in no particular order. Mordant, absurd, utterly meaningless, profound and hilarious, all at once and all the time, his latest solo exhibition, and accompanying catalogue Brain Activity, is exactly what you’d expect from Shrigley – in the best way possible.A giant finger, cast out of bronze and as a tall man greets you as you exit a lift that has been playing something dear diary-esque of a Scottish monkey. To the right, rooms called Headlessness, Everyday Life and Death – in the latter you’ll find the showpiece of the exhibition.

An exhibition touting itself as “various realisations of the prophesised end of the world” could be construed as a ploy to prick up ears, but to call Immortal Nature a sensationalist gag would be to undermine a thoroughly sophisticated show. Loosely interpreting themes of nature, extinction, and human society while incorporating a range of artists and various medium,- Edel Assanti’s current spread was a worthwhile reward for my trek through a rather windy winter evening. Sci-fi disasters and off-kilter sculptures are just a taste of what’s on offer in a gallery that’s not to be passed over (despite been very near an overpass).Viewed across three floors, each level is curated as a distinct “realm.” First was the “Underworld,” with the first floor dimly lit to simulate a sort of purgatory-esque darkness. Upon entering it was Kelly Richardson’s film Leviathan that filled the first gallery wall. Broad and magnetic, I was lost momentarily in a vision before me – Spanish moss climbing the trunks of submerged sequoias looming, figure-like, in an eerie swamp land.

Opening tomorrow at the British Museum is Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam. It is an almost overwhelmingly rich exhibition of artefacts and artworks to someone (like myself) who has very little insight into the history, power and importance of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Amongst the manuscripts (including an extraordinary and beautiful Qua’ran from the 8th Century), textiles, journals and imagery is a very small and elegant modern artistic interpretation of this spiritual phenomena called Magnetism. Artist Ahmed Mater has captured the simple correlation between magnetism and the millions of Muslims who undertake Hajj. Those who are able must make the journey once in their lifetime in a collective endeavour that is also deeply personal, an attempt at finding the “heart of reality,” and the “centre of self” so that they might better understand their lives.

People telling YouTube their troubles are a mystifying lot. Orwell would surely have a lot to say about the collective eagerness to propound our own privacy to billions – and what a cacophony of voices when they all speak at once! Christopher Baker’s Hello World Or: How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise takes hundreds of these tiny screens placing them cheek by jowl in a huge projection, the sound of their candid confessionals merging so you can’t tell who’s who, meditating instead on “the contemporary plight of democratic, participative media and the fundamental human desire to be heard.” Showing at the Saatchi Gallery until February 28.

Three very special shows opening this week in London – Alison Jacques Gallery presents Wandering Comma, Ryan McGinley’s first solo outing in London since his Moonmilk series, twin artists, Gert and Uwe Tobias celebrate their first solo show at Maureen Paley and Michael Wolf presents a beautifully broad photographic triptych installation at Flowers Gallery. London you are spoiling us!h3. Ryan McGinley: Wandering Comma Alison Jacques Gallery